Double Exposure
by icepixel
Summary: "The memories are fading, as Walter said they would." Speculation on how the two timelines might eventually be resolved, mostly in regards to Olivia, Nina, and that bombshell they dropped on us in "Subject 9."


_But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection_. — Proust, _Remembrance__ of__ Things __Past_

* * *

><p>The memories are fading, as Walter said they would. At first, she welcomes it. She's had too many other people in her head, <em>been<em> too many other people, to appreciate another resident—even if she hasn't, really, because despite her memories of it technically she never carried the thoughts and personalities of John Scott, William Bell, or her alternate. Even so, she can't deal with this other self, with two sets of memories of the same life, and so one has to go.

The more of the other Olivia's memories she lets slip away, the clearer what she considers her _real_ memories become. She went to high school in Boston, not New York. When she was trapped Over There, she lived several weeks as her alternate, rather than enduring her whole kidnapping in a cell on Liberty Island. She spent the last three years working with Peter Bishop, and she's in love with him.

The aching gap the other her had felt her whole life disappears from the edges in as she remembers Peter. He is, of course, exactly the size and shape to fill it. If she were ever to tell him this, he'd bring it up, half-teasing and half-adoring, for the rest of their lives, so she doesn't. But she lets the knowledge warm her anyway.

Only their memories returned when Peter stepped into the Machine again, so the physical ephemera of her life often look strange and alien. She lives in the same apartment, but her bedspread is the wrong color. There are two cans of cashews, which she hates, sitting in the cupboard. She now owns shirts in colors she doesn't recall ever buying clothing in.

Her stepfather has been dead since she was nine, and yet she remembers receiving an unsigned card on each of her last twenty-two birthdays.

She cleans out the desk in her living room one day soon after getting her life back, trying to put things back in the order she remembers them. She has collected a little pile of things to throw out—notes and lists that mean nothing to her now, a couple of pens with logos of conferences and vacation spots she never went to—when she comes across a photo of her and Nina Sharp at a birthday party. She has braces and the awkward body of a teenager, and Nina sports long hair and a genuine smile. She has no memory of when this photo was taken.

With what feels all too reminiscent of a punch to the gut, she realizes that she might actually be _losing_ something she'd thought she was trying to get rid of.

An increasing sense of panicked apprehension floods through her as she pulls her photo album from the nearby bookshelf. She knows who most of the people in the pictures are—her, Rachel, and Nina mostly—but recalls little to nothing to give them context. There are rooms she doesn't recognize, clothes she never wore, events she never attended. Nina is a constant in this record of her life, and yet she _knows_ they never met until three years ago.

It's only the tightness in the back of her throat that alerts her to the fact that she's started to cry.

* * *

><p>The erosion of her other life slows and finally comes to a halt over the next month. It seems that what she can still call up from it, she will keep, in echoes and double exposures.<p>

In May of 1996, she skipped her senior prom in favor of studying for a history test. She also went to it with a cute boy who ultimately turned out to be a pushy, arrogant jerk. She spent Christmas of 2001 working late on a drug case for the Marines. She also spent it in New York with Nina, Greg, and a very pregnant Rachel. In November of 2008, she flew to Baghdad to convince Peter to sign his father out of St. Claire's. The same day, she also drove to New York to see what Massive Dynamic could do about Walter's release.

Physical evidence can often prove which is the right memory. If it's been documented, it never happened. Or rather, it happened, but not to her. To the person she was, for a time.

She feels a little like Alice in Wonderland, most days.

It's difficult for all of them to stay grounded when their minds tell them one thing and everything from their old case files to the numbers programmed in their phones tell them something entirely different. Even her badge number is four digits off, for some reason, and since the number she remembers from her real life now belongs to an agent in New Mexico, there's not much she can do but memorize the new one.

It would be easier to think of their other lives as illusions if reality didn't constantly back them up.

Very occasionally, she thinks it might not have been so bad, that other life. In the photographs she now can't keep herself from looking at every few days, like poking at a sore tooth or picking at a scab, her smile is bright and her face unshadowed. In the adolescence she remembers, she and Rachel spent several years bouncing around different foster homes after their mother died. She senses that in the life she never really had, those years were happier.

But then Walter will arrive at a crime scene, or she'll pull her car up outside the Bishops' house in Allston instead of the lab, or Peter will kiss her, his touch as familiar as her name, and she knows that even if she could, she would never trade this existence for the one she lost.

But she keeps the photo album open on her coffee table just the same.

* * *

><p>Two weeks after her memories settle into something like a final arrangement, Brandon requests that he and his merry band of engineers be allowed to study the tech recovered from their latest case. It's a glove that apparently allows its wearer to heal by touch alone, but within days the effects disappear, leaving the patient as sick as he or she was before the procedure.<p>

Olivia volunteers to drive it down there. Normally a junior agent would be given the job, but there's nothing else going on today and the lab feels unusually stifling, the heat turned up to full blast in anticipation of winter. Peter offers to come with her, but shakes her head and brushes the back of his hand with hers, saying she'll see him tonight.

She hasn't seen Nina since the day Peter gave them their lives back. The other woman's number is still in her phone, and she's even brought it up on the screen a couple times over the past few weeks, her finger hovering over "send." She never manages to press it, though. Since they can't ever go back to the way things never were, she thought that maybe a clean break would be easier for both of them.

Still, after delivering the glove to Brandon, she asks Nina's assistant if she's in. After a murmured conversation through a hidden earpiece, the young woman shows her to Nina's office.

"Olivia! What a pleasant surprise," Nina says, rising from her desk chair.

"Hi," Olivia replies, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. "I was here delivering some tech from our latest case to Brandon, and I thought I'd..."

She actually has no idea why she wanted to see Nina, or at any rate none of the reasons which swirl around her head will remain still long enough to be voiced. Maybe she wanted to remember more of the relationship their other selves had. Maybe she wanted to remind herself that it never happened. Maybe she wanted to see if Nina felt its absence as much as she did.

Instead, it seems that all she's done is turn the very air around them awkward. "How are you?" she asks. It's innocent enough.

"Fine. Recent events considered," Nina replies, and she's off a step too, the usual silky-smooth rhythm of her speech broken and clumsy. She sounds like herself again by the time she asks, "And you?"

"About the same."

Whatever she came in here for, it wasn't this. She's about to make her excuses and leave when Nina angles a small framed photograph on her desk toward her. It is a picture of the three of them, Olivia and Rachel and Nina, sitting in a canoe. They have matching sunburns across their noses, but their happy expressions suggest none of them care. Nina has her arms around the two girls—they look about fourteen and twelve, respectively—holding them close to her body. "Do you remember this?" she asks. It sounds casual, but Olivia senses barely-restrained hope in the other woman's voice.

She tries, thinking of hot sun and lapping lake water, the laughter of teenaged girls and Nina's hands on hers, teaching her how to steer with the paddle. Ultimately, she knows it's all a product of her imagination. She gives a small shake of her head. "No."

Nina doesn't quite sigh. "Neither do I."

Her mouth opens and words she had no idea she was going to say come spilling out. "Nina. I know neither of us remember much of what happened in the other timeline, but I have a few hours before I have to be back in Boston, and I...do you want to go to lunch or something?"

Nina stares at her for a moment, inscrutable, before her expression softens. "I'd like that," she says. "I'd like that very much."

* * *

><p>They go to a nearby café that Nina likes. She claims the orange spice tea the owners blend themselves is nothing short of divine, and though Olivia is usually not much for tea, she agrees to try some. Their few blocks' walk in the winter weather was rather chilly, and it sounds like just the thing to warm her up.<p>

When she takes a sip, something flutters in her mind. Immediately she stills all her thoughts to let whatever it is come to her on its own, because if she chases it she knows she'll never find it again.

"Olivia?" she hears Nina ask, concern coloring her voice, and the memory springs to life.

"We've been here before," she says. "I was home"—she doesn't notice her slip until she sees Nina's surprised glance, and she feels a blush rise up her neck—"for winter break my freshman year of college. I was sure I'd bombed my Biology final, and you wanted to cheer me up."

Nina is silent for a long moment. "Did it work?"

Her brow creases in concentration. She remembers laughing, the last time she was here. "I think so."

From the way she's looking at her, Olivia can tell Nina is trying to remember what she was like at eighteen, and is not having much success. "Well," she finally says. "I'm glad." Her eyes are bright, and Olivia doesn't think it's from the lighting in the café.

She has never really thought of Nina as maternal. Mysterious, aloof, sharp-edged, even untrustworthy at first, but never the kind of woman who would drop half a dozen business meetings just to spend time making an adopted daughter feel better about a failed test. But the familiar taste of the tea dares her to deny that side of the woman sitting across from her at the table.

Again, she speaks without waiting for her brain to catch up. "When did you get into horseback riding?" Before Nina can question the non sequitur, she babbles, "It's just—I have this sketch I did of you—the other you—in riding gear, and I thought...it might be something you did as well."

She can see the moment Nina realizes where she's going with this. The tension around her eyes disappears, and she relaxes ever so slightly against the back of her chair. "I was eight," she says. "I was a Girl Scout, and I went to a camp that summer where we had lessons every day. I begged my parents to let me keep doing it throughout the year."

Olivia's mouth turns up at the image. "I was in Girl Scouts once," she says. "For about a year around that age. My niece started last year."

"Ella," Nina says uncertainly.

"Ella," Olivia confirms, smiling.

It's not the easiest conversation, since they barely exchanged two words that weren't work-related in their real past, and what they recall about the other versions of each other is often no longer true. But the bumps and jolts smooth out as they keep trying, until finally they are laughing together, like she remembers them doing here years ago, even if this is the first time they've ever done it.

And when she gets home that evening, she feels practically light enough to float. Peter, who decided to surprise her by coming over early and cooking dinner ("Once I bought all the ingredients your pantry sorely lacks," he grumbles good-naturedly), even comments on it, implicitly asking why. She just grins and kisses him until the meal almost burns.

That night, for the first time in six weeks, she puts away her photo album.


End file.
